Coming Soon: Greenberg

The trailer for Noah Baumbach’s “Greenberg,” coming in March, has just been posted. It stars Ben Stiller and Greta Gerwig (who was remarkable in Joe Swanberg’s “Hannah Takes the Stairs” and “Nights and Weekends”—which she co-directed—and Mary Bronstein’s “Yeast”). She’s a master of improvisation, and I’m looking forward to seeing how she handles Baumbach’s scripted dialogue (from the looks of the trailer, the answer is quite well). It’s scheduled to open March 12th.

Critical injustice is one of the occupational hazards of filmmaking, and Baumbach suffered it for his “Margot at the Wedding,” a film of a rare and keenly honed anger. The drama of someone in a family she sort of wants out of is far less reassuring than, say, the story of Jonathan Demme’s far more conventional “Rachel Getting Married,” about a woman who’s on the outs with her family and wants back in. Sometimes tough-minded critics fall prey to sentiment, too.